Request: UO skilling

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by orcscout, Jun 27, 2015.

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  1. orcscout

    orcscout Avatar

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    I'm happy with what I heard on the Starr's NBNN Interview. It's not UO skilling but sounds like close enough. I'm satisfied, and I want to thank everyone who didn't settle for mediocre and supported this idea. I don't know if we did anything to push things our way, but we got the result that we wanted and that's what matters.

    /thread
     
  2. Archangel

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    +1

    Enough with those childish skill allocation systems. I expected much more from SotA

    What I loved most about UO - that it didn't matter how strong you are. If you go to the wilderness naked - you will die fighting a bear or a wolf. But now I'm just sitting in the woods... grinding my levels WoW style. I just hate that Lord British promised us to bring back us UO but made another WoW clone instead. Even Diablo2 clone Path of Exile had more unique ideas that SotA.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2015
  3. Thunder Chicken

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    YES UO SKILLS!!
     
  4. Archangel

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    Many bring out the stupid "macro" card when talking about UO skills. But they forget that every skill is unique and to swing your sword at a monster you can't only stand in a corner.
     
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  5. Montaberne

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    To be fair, it was how you did it in UO:T2A ;) But it was more of a targeting system exploit.
     
  6. Roper Docholiday

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    anyone have a link for the interview?
     
  7. Cosmos

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    Here :
     
  8. Burzmali

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    Any word if this means that they are dropping the closed, player-driven economy?
     
  9. NRaas

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    I must be dense... How are the two related ? :)
     
  10. Burzmali

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    Linking consumption to improvement causes the economy to distort, UO had a closed economy originally and the devs were forced to open it because everyone was winding up with massive amounts of low level crafted items for which there was no market and new materials couldn't spawn. The original SOTA model would have made a closed economy hard, but maybe with the right decay rates and the reasonable sink prices it could have worked. With UO skill leveling, you end up with thousands of toothpicks on the market for each tooth in need of a pick, as it were, which isn't a viable economic model.
     
  11. Mishri

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    What do you mean by closed and open economy? Meaning trading/selling is open and closed is no way to sell items? That's what it sounds like from your description. Players were always going to be able to sell items.. That is what makes an economy player driven.

    I Think you are talking about a game driven economy, where everything is controlled by the game, prices are set, you buy things at this rate and there you go. Player driven economies mean the players buy/sell everything, so the players establish what the value of something is.

    This, like most games, is going to be a bit of a hybrid.. mostly because you need gold to exit the system in some manner or we have rampant inflation.. that's where gold sinks come in.. taxes, skill training etc.. However, they have said all high level items are player craftable, that means the players get to set prices and the value is up to the players, and most items are going to be player crafted, basically crafting ingredients should be the only thing not player created/harvested. (And only because they want crafters to have to buy things as a bit of a gold sink so they aren't getting too rich)
     
  12. NRaas

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    Ah.

    We know from previous releases that selling production-level goods to the NPCs is essentially a no-no, because they don't buy them at a reasonable price. You need to sell to players if you want to stay in business as a professional crafter.

    And if you want to sell to players, one needs to make a product that is in demand.

    If the player wants to be an amateur crafter though, and doesn't mind grinding away to simply acquire experience, then so be it. I believe the future possibility of smelting down produced goods will serve them well in that regards. :)
     
  13. Burzmali

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    Open vs. closed economies mean whether or not the developers control the total amount of value in the economy (closed) or simply the rates at which value enters and leaves the system (open). In a closed economy you can say that at any given time that X gold pieces of stuff is in existence and Y is available to be harvested and X + Y is some value the is proportional to total number of player, their total number of levels and/or the date. This controls inflation and allows the players to do cool things like run banks with the knowledge that the economy is unlikely to flip on its head because a guild decides to liquidate their collection of knee socks to an NPC vendor and flood the market with gold. In an open economy, the developers only control how quickly value enters the system and sets prices and decay rates to prevent too much value from accumulating in the economy. This usually works fine, but it means that the economy is "driven" by those faucets and sinks and the player-side of the economy is merely a way to trap some value from leaving the system.

    The rub is that basic crafting ingredients that must be harvested are much more valuable in a usage-based skill improvement system than in a level or timer based improvement system. As you can't advance without them, players have a strong incentive to work at a loss to improve their skills. If you have a significant percentage of the workforce working at a loss, you have a dysfunctional economy. Copper ore will be more valuable than gold ore as the value of a commodity that can be used to grind a skill will be greater than one that is used for mid-tier commodities. UO had this exact problem in its early days and in that case they opened the economy and provided guaranteed profits on low level crafting products.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2015
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  14. Lord Ravnos

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    Have they specifically said crafting skills will ALSO be usage based? (so far I've only seen/heard/read about adventuring (combat) skills using a Usage based model.
     
  15. Mishri

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    okay.. because an open economy means there is money/goods coming into the economy from outside of it.. a closed economy is there are no goods/money coming into the system, it's running off of what exists within... and it has always been described as an open economy... I'm not sure where you got the idea it would be a closed economy.

    As far as copper ore vs gold ore, (or in UO's case Iron Ore) you make it so certain items need certain types of ore, which is exactly what SoTA is doing, higher level items that give you more exp require the rarer ingredients.... so the rarer ore you find and use at higher levels will (hopefully) hold value.

    Also, I never saw Iron or Copper ore being worth more than gold ore back in the old days of UO, because the rarer colors gave more armor bonus.. a full plate of valorite was worth a ton compared to iron.. and the cost of the bars matched that disparity. (I think Shadow was priced higher than it should have been just because of the color, it wasn't much better than dull copper)
     
  16. ThurisazSheol

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    i'm still trying to figure out where in the heck economies come into play with a skill system.
     
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  17. Burzmali

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    It's short for closed-loop, consumption and destruction of goods is required to pump new raw materials into the system, like the first law of thermodynamics, value can neither be created nor destroyed through ordinary means. This has the historical downside of players hording goods, effectively removing value from the cycle and causing the supply of new raw materials to dry up.

    It depends on the implementation details, but any way you design it, entry level raw materials will be more expensive than anything you can make from them. This is an economic problem that I haven't heard an answer to from the devs.
    Usage based skill improvement requires grinding crafting, which inflates the cost of raw materials and breaks most economies. It's no surprise that the most popular games with large scale, functional, player driven economies avoid it.
     
  18. ThurisazSheol

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    it doesn't REQUIRE it. if used PROPERLY, AS DESIGNED - not barely within the limits of the system - it wouldn't require it. use based skills allow for a progression and an evolution of the character.

    for people who choose to treat the system as a tool to min/max, they just lose context and content by choice. those of us who choose to evolve with the systems, are usually in it for the long haul and won't abuse the system and won't be a cause for your concern, at all. - for the most part, the community will outlast the abusers.
     
  19. Burzmali

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    If your economic model breaks down because a group of aspies decide that the want to spend the day grinding out enough trombones to provide one to each resident of a modest European nation, in an effort to earn the ability to make tubas, then you didn't design it very well in the first place.

    If you want UO's skill system, you are acknowledging that grinding will be required. If crafters are grinding, they will overproduce while driving up the cost of raw materials. If crafters overproduce enough, they will be forced to sell to NPC vendors at a loss. The only way this system is sustainable is if the ratio of crafters to noncrafters is low enough that crafters aren't driven bankrupt through competition.
     
  20. ThurisazSheol

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    incorrect, i am not acknowledging that grinding will be required, while simultaneously desiring a similar system to UO's use-skill system. note that i do not want an identical system to that of UO. while a decent system, and fun for those of us who utilized it appropriately, it still left much to be desired. mostly details.

    tubas aren't trombones. apples and oranges. and it should remain that way. if i want to be A Guy That Makes Trombone Slides, i want to make trombone slides, and gain skill in doing so. but to be THE go-to guy, i also have to USE the trombone to make music... that in and of itself is not grinding, unless if you only accept the best of the best of the best, from the start, and want to BE the best at it, from the start. - that is where the abuse of the system comes in, the grinding as you call it. requiring one to use the item that is created, and combining that skill along with the skill earned in creating the item, allows for one to master that craft.

    utilized properly, a user of the skill system will continue to make trombone slides for their trombones, because they aren't a musician that plays a clarinet - they play the trombone! i do NOT want to be good at creating a clarinet reed, by way of being a trombone slide mad scientist.

    that means, that both USE of the trombone slide, and creation of it, are what makes the crafter great at crafting trombone slides. not JUST the creation of it.

    conversely, i do not wish to get better at fletching by building chairs. both use wood, yes, but they are not the same. they can have an effect on each other, because they are both at some level woodworking, but they should never equate to each other.

    lastly, i want it to be an overlay system. i don't want it to be the only system out there. i'm seeing it as a system that allows you to have better crits at making the item, the more experience you have at making the item. it could even tie into the celestial system they're building, where it gives you a wider range of flexibility due to the time restrictions....or it imbues the buffs you get by selecting the specific time to craft the item, to be even stronger than if you weren't a grandmaster at trombone slides.
     
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